![](https://emergencyservicestimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/ESS-Button-resized.png")
The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) has released new findings from the Domestic Homicide Project, revealing that 262 people died in England and Wales due to domestic abuse between April 2023 and March 2024.
The annual report tracks the scale and nature of domestic abuse-related deaths in real time, providing the only dataset of its kind in England and Wales. It includes insights from bereaved families who continue to push for change across policing, government and partner agencies.
For the second year in a row, suspected suicides following domestic abuse have overtaken the number of homicides involving current or previous partners. This reflects increased awareness and progress made against recommendations in the project’s last report, which focused on improving policing’s ability to better recognise and record the link between domestic abuse and suicide.
Over four years (April 2020 – March 2024), the number of people killed by their current or previous partner consistently represents around a third of domestic abuse-related deaths each year.
“The sustained nature of domestic homicide shows how deeply ingrained violence against women and girls is in our communities.
“The Domestic Homicide Project has now recorded over 1,000 domestic abuse-related deaths across a four year period. The scale and impact is incomprehensible and as a society, we cannot delay action to prevent future deaths.”
Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe, national policing lead for domestic abuse.
The report demonstrates the need for a multi-agency response that spans the wider criminal justice system, healthcare and local authorities such as social services, to tackle domestic abuse and prevent future deaths, particularly suicides. In cases of SVSDA, 9 in 10 victims and/or prior domestic abuse perpetrators were known to partner agencies.
Across the four-year dataset, the most commonly recorded risk factors in relation to the suspects were mental ill health, a history of coercive and controlling behaviour (CCB), alcohol use and drug misuse, representing a key opportunity to intercept perpetrators through healthcare, substance misuse and mental health services.
“The data reinforces the critical need for policing to work with other agencies to identify those at risk of being both a perpetrator or a victim of domestic abuse. A preventative approach is the only way to stop the widespread harm of domestic abuse in all its forms.”
Police forces have made significant changes in relation to the recommendations made in last year’s Domestic Homicide Report, with most forces incorporating:
- Specific training for officers to raise awareness of the link between domestic abuse (DA) and suicide. Review teams are proactively working to better identify cases of suicide with links to DA.
- Updated unexpected death policies, there are explicit procedures to prompt officers to consider DA or CCB in unexpected deaths or suspected suicides and carry out system checks.
- Growing number of cases of SVSDA submitted for Domestic Homicide Reviews and increasing rate of posthumous charges for domestic abuse offences, reflecting improved ability to identify these cases.
“We have a much better understanding of the complex nature of domestic abuse than ever before, but there is more for policing to do to ensure that every domestic-abuse related death is properly recognised, and where appropriate, adequately investigated.
“54% of suspects of domestic homicide were previously known to police as perpetrators of domestic abuse, highlighting the importance of a prompt, robust police response from the outset of a report. That is why the broader police response to domestic abuse is focused on driving improvements and consistency in offender management and better protection for victims.”
New protective orders with longer-term, more robust safety measures and quicker charging decisions for cases are currently being piloted in select forces, with the aim of better supporting victims through the criminal justice system.
In addition, police forces are rolling out video technology to respond to non-urgent reports of domestic abuse, which has shown to increase arrest rates, secure quicker convictions and bring the response time down from 32 hours to an average of three minutes. Alongside this work, select police forces have also began piloting Raneem’s Law, embedding specially trained domestic abuse support in police contact rooms to get the right support to victims reporting domestic abuse.
The recommendations from this year’s report focus on better information sharing and a more joined-up approach across policing, government and other agencies, including healthcare and mental health and substance misuse services, to better recognise and intercept domestic abuse, particularly in young people.
Additional recommendations highlight the need to continue to strengthen policing and the wider criminal justice system’s approach to investigating and prosecuting in cases of SVSDA.
To read similar articles, check out our Frontline channel.
